


The Affair

by MrsPearson



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pizza Place, Bad Decisions, College, Drama & Romance, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Family Drama, Infidelity, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 11:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18073004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsPearson/pseuds/MrsPearson
Summary: Eliza Brooks is ready to just quit by this point. Quit school, quit her job, quit her relationship. As she closes in on her junior year of college, her expenses seem to mount higher. She decides to find a roommate and take a couple fewer classes to make things a little bit easier especially given her recent promotion at her job. When things finally seem to be working themselves out, Eliza's world is suddenly turned on it's axis yet again. Hopefully, she can keep herself from reeling with it and come out okay in the end.





	The Affair

**Author's Note:**

> Just a disclosure, the actions of the characters within this work do not represent my ideals or opinions. This is just a piece that has been developing in my mind for just over 4 years now. Updates may be slow, but I promise I won't abandon this work. This is a baby of mine.

The gritty feeling of cornmeal stuck to her skin as she tried to brush it away. It always seemed to stick to her. Even at home she found patches of her skin plastered with the rough, yellow substance. Eliza sighed deeply, brushing the front of her apron as she did so, a small wave of more cornmeal cascading down her legs as she did so. She walked behind the other girl working on the line with her to get to the rack filled with half full bottles and cans. Every slot had someone’s name written hastily with permanent marker on a box label so nobody drank somebody else’s drink. She easily found hers, a blue water metal water bottle with a screw on cap that she often filled with tea. Today, for example, it was filled with a mixture of a hibiscus green tea and lemonade. The metal was cool in her hands as she twisted off the cap and drank down several large swallows. The tea/lemonade mixture was just what she needed as the hours swept by. It kept her relatively alert without giving her the jitters. She laughed to herself as she thought about her experience with energy drinks when she first started working late nights here. They had nearly had to send her home she was shaking so bad. Never again. Since then, she found she could work late in the evening if she scheduled her classes for early in the morning and essentially just went home to shower and get ready for class then sleep after class and before work. It had treated her well thus far, and she had been doing it for about a semester now. She was looking forward to the summer as she would be able to work without worrying about classes, and she might be able to actually spend some time with her girlfriend, Mari.  
This train of thought was cut off as she heard her name called from the front of the store. Eliza quickly screwed the top back onto her water bottle and headed up to the front of the small restaurant with a wide grin on her face.  
“Hey, Eliza, there’s a guy on the phone saying one of our drivers nearly hit his car out on Old Gull Road. Do you know who that would’ve been?”  
“Actually, no because that’s in the Main Street area, not ours. Give him their number and let him know. Make sure to be professional about it, Daniel.” She gave the man a warning look.  
“Okay, will do.” he said as he turned back to the phone.  
Eliza shook her head. Daniel was a good kid. A couple years younger than her and fresh out of high school. He had told her during his interview that he was taking a gap year to earn some money to earn enough to go to the expensive state college just down the road. She had a sneaking suspicion his gap year might turn into two or three before he actually went back to school. She had seen it happen with her older sister, and heard the stories from the veteran employees here. They had initially meant to come in and earn about ten thousand dollars for whatever purpose it was: new car, college tuition, moving out, so on and so forth. Then, they’d get sucked into the vortex and be stuck there, some for years and years.  
Eliza was honestly thankful she hadn’t tried to do a gap year, or she most likely wouldn’t have gone back to school at all. She would’ve ended up working full time with her high school diploma and moving her way up through the ranks only to hit a firm ceiling. With her Bachelor’s, she at least would be able to get a little further before hitting that next ceiling. By that point, hopefully, they’d be willing to pay for her to go back to school. She didn’t need to bother thinking about that at this point. She still had to climb up within her store. Right now, she was only a shift manager. She still had to become assistant then store manager within just this store. By that point, she’d have her Bachelor’s in Business Management, and she could vye for the position of district manager. She still had her sights set higher, though, at the corporate level. Eliza couldn’t spend all of her time daydreaming about her dreams, however, as the bright electronic chirps from her makeline proved. She jumped into action when she saw the three orders suddenly pop up on the screens positioned at key intervals down the make line. She grabbed some of the dough she’d made earlier in the week and began to work it into a smooth flat disk ready for saucing and topping. She easily ladled out marinara sauce onto the soft dough and smoothed it into a thin layer across the surface, leaving a thin edge for the crust to develop in the oven. Eliza then sprinkled a healthy portion of cheese over the sauce before handing it to the other girl on the line, Shakti. This process continued for the next twenty or so minutes with her stretching, saucing, and cheesing pizzas and Shakti topping them and putting them in the oven with a revolving door of drivers taking them out of the oven, cutting them, and putting them into boxes. The repetitiveness was comfortable to her. It made sense, and the controlled chaos of it made her feel alive in a way nothing else did. Well, maybe game days. Game days were something special.  
When the brief rush was over and Eliza checked the clock, she nearly yelped. She had to run to the back to start printing out the paperwork for her nightly inventory. She was already fifteen minutes late on her personal schedule for getting it done which would put her further behind later on if she didn’t hurry now. She hurriedly had Shakti start putting away the excess ingredients from underneath of the makeline and cleaning up the top of it as well. She took the one driver who was set to leave in the next forty five minutes and had him clean the small front area, which consisted of two benches for people to sit at and the front patio with another two benches. She then set about counting up all of the boxes of ingredients they had on hand in their dry storage before getting to their refrigerated product. She shrugged on the sweater she kept in the restaurant for this express purpose and headed into the cooler. She felt the metal of piercings grow cooler in the chill of the air as she tried to write down what they had in stock as accurately and quickly as possible.Eliza exited the cooler nearly twenty minutes later with rosy cheeks, red tipped ears, and numb fingers. She set down her clipboard holding the inventory list and rubbed her hands together to try and regain feeling in them. With a brief look at her watch, she was pleased to note she was only a few minutes behind schedule now. This meant she wouldn’t be stuck here for an extra half hour trying desperately to get the paperwork done before the system locked her out for the night as it did only an hour after they closed. Once she could actually feel her hands again, she began entering the information into the ancient computer located in the back office nestled in the back corner of the store. Hidden away behind the towering stacks of boxes. The large cork board that hung in front of the window prevented any light from entering the office from the restaurant inside as well keeping it away from prying eyes. It had become the best place to perform discrete firings and the occasional breakdown that occurred.  
Her own nervous breakdown early into her management career here had been here as well. She had just moved up to full time hours, and she was struggling to juggle it with a full time class load. She was still trying to sleep both after work and after class, and she was getting the worst sleep she could imagine. Her grades were slipping and her work performance was starting to suffer as well. She was snippy with people, and beginning to become impatient with customers. They’d had to take her off the phones as she had actually growled over the phone a customer hemmed and hawed over their order. After nearly three weeks with the poorest sleep she’d had, she finally broke down and started crying when a customer came storming in demanding to speak with a manager and when she spoke up, he began to berate her as though she had personally offended him by forgetting an order of cheese sticks. She had tried to hold off, but once he told her she was a worthless, good-for-nothing, she dissolved into sobs right there at the front counter, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. This had shocked the man into silence at the time, and another employee had run to get the district manager who happened to be in the store at the time to come corral her into the back office where she sat with the kindly woman for the next twenty minutes crying and sniffling as she explained the situation. They had given her the rest of the week off to get some rest and come back the next week with a game plan. She had, and since then she had managed to keep herself from tearing apart at the seams again. She managed through midterms and was about three weeks away from finals now. She had her doubts as to whether she’d be able to make it through this semester’s finals, given her class load and her workload, but she tried to squash them down along with the other worries she had.  
As she waited for the report to print for the night, she heard someone enter the door to the office. She turned and saw the driver she had asked to clean the front of the store. He had a fistful of receipts and an olive green pouch bulging with cash. She motioned for him to hand her the receipts and take a seat beside her. She pulled up his cash out screen and began entering the information from the receipts, occasionally commenting if she couldn’t read something or if one was out of order. Soon, she had his total and he handed her the requisite cash from his pouch and counted the rest, a smile growing on his face as he continued.  
“A good night, I’m guessing?” she commented as he finished.  
“Very!” Daniel replied, a toothy grin spread wide across his youthful face. His boyish face leant him more of an edge in the business as he looked like he could just be another cute high school kid with his chubby cheeks and dazzling smile. “I made nearly a hundred in tips! Definitely enough to cover at least one of my textbooks.”  
Eliza just laughed good naturedly. He was a sweet, if a bit naive, guy. She knew he had a girlfriend who lived on the other side of town who went to the community college for cosmetology, and she was sure she was a very happy girl with him. He just exuded sunshine from every pore, and he was like puppy with his hopefulness. You couldn’t help but smile as he talked. “Well, make sure you keep it saved away, alright. It won’t do you any good for books if you spend it now on something else.” She advised.  
“Of course, straight into the savings account this goes!” He cheered, tucking the money back into its pouch.  
“Good, now go get some sleep, you crazy kid.” she shooed him off, as she saw the other driver hovering in the doorway, ready for him to cash her out as well. “Come in, Jasmine. I won’t bite.”  
Closing the store was a simple enough process for Eliza. She just had to go through money by this point, print out the reports, and help with the cleaning. She counted through the register and the safe in the back before making the deposit for the night and tucking it away in her purse for safekeeping until she left at the end of the night. The reports were printing as she did this, and she went off to help sweep and mop the store from front to back as Jasmine did the dishes. Jasmine and Eliza had an easy agreement. They did the same tasks every time, and they didn’t bother each other too much in the process. It was efficient, and they found themselves closing together more often than not. Once all the reports had been signed and left on the desk for the opener to look over the next morning and the dishes were left drying on the shelves, Jasmine and Eliza left the store with Eliza locking the door behind them with the worn key she’d been given when she’d been made a manager seven months ago. She waved goodbye to Jasmine as she got into her car and turned the key in the ignition. She cranked the radio up and headed towards the bank to drop off the deposit as usual and hummed along with whatever was playing. The streets weren’t quite deserted, but they were relatively empty as it was four in the morning on Thursday. She parked in front of the bank and pulled the deposit bag out of her purse to drop it in the dropbox. Once Eliza was sure it had dropped to the bottom, she drove off towards her apartment to get a shower and some homework in before class.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the relatively boring first chapter, just trying to set up baseline for you! It should pick up soon(next chapter or two)


End file.
